Armed Forces

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater for introducing the debate. I remind the House of my interest as an infrequently serving TA officer. Before getting into my main speech, I would like to pick up on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, about Special Forces. The simple fact is that only a small proportion of our Armed Forces are suitable for Special Forces, whose skill set is so remarkable. It is also worth remembering that, by the standards of many countries, our Royal Marines Commandos are Special Forces. Yesterday’s policy Statement about Afghanistan and Pakistan was interesting. There was some recognition that the operation is not purely military, but we are not pulling all the levers of the state’s power, both hard and soft, together in unison. Apart from the Prime Minister himself, there is no single Minister who can wield that power. The power is diluted and divided and no one controls the money. The Statement said that the number of civilian experts in Afghanistan was to be doubled. Will the Minister say what the new total will be? That is the only question that I am going to ask. Many noble Lords have queried whether our Armed Forces are properly equipped. In effect, have we got our threat assessment wrong and, from that, our capability management? I am not sure that we have got it that wrong. The problem lies with the strategic decisions that we have made: first, operating at double medium scale plus when only resourced for one medium-scale operation and one small operation; and, secondly, the way in which we are prosecuting the campaign in Afghanistan. On that, I will be building on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. As for Iraq, I look forward to the conclusions of the inquiry into that campaign, which will start at some point. Despite the Government’s protestations, our operations on the ground in Afghanistan are primarily military in nature. Moreover, there is insufficient density of military and security staff in the difficult provinces. ISAF does not compare well to IFOR in that respect. Another difficulty is that many of ISAF’s troops are located in the quiet areas and operate under significant national caveats. This also gives weight to a Taliban argument that ISAF is merely a western force of occupation. As many noble Lords have observed, members of our Armed Forces have been prosecuting the campaign in Afghanistan with vigour and courage. They are in contact with the Taliban on a daily basis. Inevitably there can be loss of civilian life and damage to civilian infrastructure but, unlike with the Americans, reconstruction for us does not start the next day. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, explained some of these difficulties with far more authenticity and credibility than I can manage. But often the area of operations is too dangerous for conventional NGOs, and DfID does not do danger, as it appears to see itself as not having a tactical role. Thus, we can have only military and not civil effect. I am not sure how we are going to change an adverse civil culture by purely military means. Yesterday, the Government released their policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The policy observed that most Afghans do not support the Taliban but are waiting to see who predominates. Nevertheless, they also have a cultural position. The policy paper alluded to a decisive blow against the Taliban. I think that that is illusory and there will not be one. We need to drive a wedge between the reconcilable and the irreconcilable Taliban, which has been the policy for some time. Effective reconstruction and its delivery are crucial to this, but we must also recognise and understand the cultural issues. For instance, one of our objectives in Afghanistan is to empower women, which is an absolutely proper and desirable objective. But how does that fit in with the Afghan culture and do we understand it? Out of 8,000 12 year-old English girls, one will die from childbearing-related complications. We could do better because the figure in Sweden is one in 17,000. However, in developing countries the ratio is one in 450 and in Afghanistan it is one in nine. I repeat: one in nine Afghan women will die as the result of childbearing problems. On top of that, two in every 10 Afghan babies die before their fifth birthday. The figures are horrendous and hard to comprehend; indeed, only two other countries in the world have a worse record. However, it is not just poverty. As many noble Lords know, Afghanistan has very few proper midwives or decent facilities, but we know too that the culture is very complex and we do not fully understand it. When our troops deploy to theatre, they undertake pre-deployment training and study the culture, but only enough for a six-month tour. Apparently, Afghan men are very poor at permitting and facilitating medical intervention into their wives’ pregnancies or deliveries and they would certainly never allow a male doctor to attend. They will not relent even if their wives suffer diabolical pain or injury, or even if she bleeds to death over two days. It is very hard for us to understand why they allow such suffering, but I am afraid that it is in their culture. If we are honest, until recently the UK was a bit homophobic, but the Government changed our culture by a number of means. They did it slowly, but we have changed. When I came back from Afghanistan two years ago, having been there with the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, I came to the view that we need either a hardened and well financed NGO or something much more akin to the old ODA of the early 1990s. It could come under either the MoD or the FCO, but in both cases it would work closely with our military at the tactical level. It would have integrated communications and individuals would be trained to have good operational skills. They would need to be able to marshal a military helicopter to an emergency landing site. But what is most important is that they would have to be prepared to accept enhanced risk and deal with danger. There is no point in taking a steady stream of military casualties and not achieving our desired end state, or to do it so slowly that it does not matter. The mission would be to provide civil effect in order to encourage local Afghans to reject the Taliban and move towards a more prosperous and healthy Afghanistan. I do not think that this is a role for the Territorial Army, but if we continue to prosecute the campaign as a purely military one, we are unlikely to achieve the desired end state.